One Bright Day in the Middle of the Night
by Victoria Hughes
Summary: In which Bumblebee and Sam participate in a drag race. Sam isn't too happy about it. Pointless silliness featuring a surprise character.


_Another story where all the credit goes to Moonsheen. Pointless fluff ensues._

**One Bright Day in the Middle of the Night**

Sam had never understood why some stories started with "The day started out perfectly normal". After all, unless events started happening before the character woke up, why _wouldn't _the day start out normal? Weird things happened on perfectly ordinary days all the time – as today proved.

Of course, for Sam Witwicky, 'normal' was having a sentient Chevrolet Camaro 2010 concept car with diplomat plates and a top speed of two hundred and thirty miles an hour, so maybe expecting the unexpected came with the car.

Sam and Bumblebee were on the outskirts of Tranquility, on the far side of the lake where Sam had picked up Mikaela three months ago in a beat-up 1976 Camaro that turned out to be a giant alien robot from space. (Who knew?) And now he was sitting in said car as the Autobot drove him in the general direction of his house. They weren't getting anywhere fast, granted, not because Bumblebee was slow but because the Autobot was taking the very, very long way around. One of the other bonuses of being an alien robot was not running on gasoline. Bumblebee said Sam was saving around three thousand dollars a year by simply not having to fill his car's tank every three hundred miles.

They were idling at a stop sign when the other car pulled up. A 2009 Pontiac Grand AM with a custom paint job of bright red flames, the car pulled up on Bumblebee's driver side, sitting in the lane meant for oncoming traffic. Sam startled at its arrival. "Uh …" he leaned out of Bumblebee's window. "You do know this road is only two lanes, right?" he shouted.

The driver in the other car looked over at Sam, and the window rolled down. He had dark sunglasses on despite the dusk and slicked back bleach-blond hair; he was dressed in a polo shirt and a tight-fitting jacket. "Hey dude," the guy said, smirking widely. "Sweet ride."

"Uh, thanks?" Sam blinked, nonplussed. "You … too?" He kind of thought the flames looked tacky, actually.

The other guy laughed; the Pontiac's engine revved. "Wanna race?"

Sam stared at him. The road ahead twisted and turned and went over hills, and it only had two lanes. He wasn't worried about himself – Bumblebee was an _excellent _driver – but the other guy had to be crazy to want to race on a road like that. "What? No – no I don't wanna race! What are you, druuuaaaAAUGH!"

The last word turned into a scream as Bumblebee suddenly revved his engine, cranked the radio on Offspring's 'Staring at the Sun', and hit the gas.

"Bumblebee!" Sam screamed. The wind from the rolled-down window whipped through the Autobot's interior, tearing Sam's words away from his ears as he watched the speedometer rapidly climb – ninety, one hundred, one hundred and twenty, one hundred and fifty. "Bumblebee, y-y-you're – he's going to – what if another car comes!?"

There was a screech of static. "_I got you, babe … I got you, babe …" _the radio abruptly began to croon, the slow beat of the song completely at odds with the high speed. Sam clutched his seat so tightly his fingers began to go white as the Camaro left behind the stop sign and the short straightaway to plunge into the winding road weaving through the woods.

"I know, I know, I just – what about the other guy?" Sam shouted.

A car horn honked.

It wasn't Bumblebee's. Sam nearly gave himself whiplash looking to the left; where he had expected to see a blur of trees, he saw the Pontiac, and the driver inside who was giving Sam a jaunty wave. "Try to keep up!" the guy shouted, and laughed as the Pontiac began to pull away. Sam whipped his gaze back to the dashboard and saw that Bumblebee's needle was hovering around two hundred miles per hour.

How the _hell _was the Pontiac's driver controlling his car at that speed?

"What is going on!?" Sam screamed, but Bumblebee wasn't answering (or maybe wasn't paying attention any more). The Autobot downshifted and accelerated again, screeching around a curve and leaving behind a smell of burnt rubber, and soon they were once again neck-and-neck with the Pontiac, tearing around curves at nearly two hundred and forty miles an hour.

It was a mercy when Bumblebee rolled up the window again. Sam could faintly see the Pontiac's driver laughing. And then, they were all airborne for several seconds when the two cars sailed over a hill not meant for speeds exceeding thirty miles per hour.

Sam screamed again, distantly aware that he sounded like a little girl. He squeezed his eyes shut. "Tell me when it's over," he gasped, pressing his hands to the car roof as they bounced back to the ground. "I don't wanna know, I don't wanna know --!"

It seemed like an eternity – but it was more likely less than a minute – before Sam's seatbelt tightened around him and Bumblebee began to rapidly decelerate. Sam gasped for air and clutched his seat again, daring to open his eyes when Bumblebee drifted sideways to hasten his halt before rolling into a gravel parking lot.

The Pontiac followed Bumblebee. The smell of burnt rubber assaulted Sam's nose when Bumblebee finally popped open the driver's side door. Sam scrambled to undo his seatbelt and practically rolled out of the Camaro, his legs like jelly from adrenaline.

The driver of the Pontiac was laughing.

Sam, sitting on his knees with his head resting against Bumblebee's car door, glared at him. "How can … you laugh … after a stunt like that?" he panted.

The guy leaned over his car door and grinned down at Sam. "You humans," he said. "You all worry too much."

He flickered.

Sam stared at him – it? "… You're … a Transformer?" he asked, incredulous.

The holographic driver smirked at him. "Call me Hot Rod."

Sam shook his head, licking his lips. "Couldn't you have just … you know … introduced yourself like a normal per—I mean …"

Hot Rod's engine revved, a sound Sam had learned to identify as either a laugh or a growl. "Hey, what's the fun in that?" His wheels spun in the gravel as he began to pull around. "Anyway, that race was a scratch. You jumped the gun, 'Bee. One more time?"

"No. No way," Sam started to complain, but Bumblebee was pulling away from where Sam knelt, his car door swinging shut again. When Sam looked up it was to see a familiar chick with long blonde hair sitting in the driver's seat as the Autobot followed Hot Rod towards the road. "Hey! Where are you going?"

_"Let's do the time warp aga~ain!"_ sang Bumblebee's radio.

"Come on, you can be the starter gun," Hot Rod protested.

Sam sighed and got to his feet; his knees were still trembling. "Okay, whatever, but if I miss curfew because you're messing around, 'Bee, my parents are gonna _kill _you."

Bumblebee's hologram smiled at him and tossed her hair, unimpressed. Sam shook his head. "All right … uh … ready, set … go!"

The two Autobots peeled out in a dead heat to race around the lake, Hot Rod laughing all the way.

_Fin_

_One bright day in the middle of the night_

_Two dead boys got up to fight._

_Back to back they faced each other,_

_Drew their swords and shot each other._

_A deaf policeman heard the noise – _

_Came and shot the two dead boys._

_If you don't believe this lie is true,_

_Ask the blind man. He saw it too!_

_--In which Bumblebee and Hot Rod are the boys, Sam is the deaf policeman, and you are the blind man. *g*_


End file.
